Cancer is presently the second leading cause of death in developed nations. Wingo et al. J. Reg. Management, 25:43-51 (1998). Despite recent research that has revealed many of the molecular mechanisms of tumorigenesis, few new treatments have achieved widespread clinical success in treating solid tumors. Current treatments for most malignancies thus remain gross resection, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy. While increasingly successful, each of these treatments still causes numerous undesired side effects. The primary cause of these side effects is that none of these conventional methods specifically targets only diseased cells. For example, surgery results in pain, traumatic injury to healthy tissue, and scarring. Radiotherapy and chemotherapy cause nausea, immune suppression, gastric ulceration and secondary tumorigenesis. Furthermore, some types of cancer mean certain death for the patient.
The challenge has been: how can we make a great impact in controlling a disease that is widely known as the most devastating uncontrollable disease that is so certain to kill the patient within three months in so many cases that have been encountered. Pancreatic cancer is known as the “Kiss of Death” and a certain progression to disaster for the patient, the patient's family and friends.
There is thus a need in the art for drugs and therapies which not only selectively target tumor cells, treat previously untreatable tumors and maintain low toxicity when administered to patients.